Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Clay Face Dec 2021
The pillow’s creased, and coffee cold.
Drops on the window, you seek console.
I’m not there to comfort, or elucidate.
We share a glance, although you may not know.

All the time you were beside me.
Continues to tomorrow and today.
Dissolution and irreverence cloud you.
But I beckon for a light to shine.
Just know I miss you.
You’re never absent in my mind.

Dig yourself a hole, pitiful and abysmal.
I can’t see you when you hide behind my sepulchral existence.
I pine to see you alive once again.
Life seems equivocal and anachronistic.
Anger swoons.
Please don’t tumble into rash being.
I cannot stand to see you apathetic, not tending to your wounds.

Someday you’ll find me.
My eyes in another.
Please let me hold you.
I’ve come so far to be here to solace.
Don’t question my new frame or figure.
Just accept the love I trudged with vigor.
Justin S Wampler Dec 2021
We were a trio.
Gone together,
mentally alone.

90's alternative had been playing for maybe
three-quarters of an hour, and at this point
we were all mostly toasted.
A shot of beer a minute.

Talking ****, shuffling the deck.

Nick laughed, Luke mocked.
I cheered them both on.
In that moment we all lived in the golden light
of youthful ignorance and concrete friendship
that can only be fully grasped by a drunken trio of guys
in their mid-twenties at 2:00 AM on an idle Thursday night.

We all cracked fresh cold ones and lit up fresh cigs,
and I raised the burning tobacco in a toast:
"To friendship!"

Luke matched my pose, left arm outstretched.
We caught each other's eyes, and without missing a beat
his right hand plunged the cherry into his left forearm.
I looked down and saw myself doing the same,
yet felt no pain. We stayed that way until our embers died,
and relit the remaining smoke off of a shared flame.
Nick never matched our level of commitment,
I doubt he even bears a scar these days.
My scar still itches from time to time.
I wonder if Lukes does, too.

Eventually
I started seeing tunnels
and soon, gravity took me.
Horizontality was my fate.
I was the first to fall,
the first to succumb to gratuitous consumption.

...

Birds chirping, deafening in the late morning.
The angry sun cast slotted beams
through the still-lingering twines
of cigarette smoke from the night before.
I watched it slowly twirl and stir through slitted eyelids.
My eyes hurt, and my neck creaked as I looked around.
Nick passed out beside me, I figured Luke got the top bunk.
In the daylight I could always see the apartment for what
it really was.
An escape.
One room, bunk beds, and abject emotional destitution.
I rolled over on to the floor and steadied myself with
closed eyes and a palm planted on the ***** carpets.
My phone was on the desk in the corner, I grabbed it
and headed towards the bathroom.

**** cascaded, and through the open bathroom window
I could hear it echo off of the buildings lining New Street.
My hand floated up to the back of my head
and picked at something. Something hardened.
There was a thick layer of something
on the back of my scalp,
down the back of my neck.
It felt like wax.
We were burning a candle last night.
They must've dumped it on me
since I was the first to fall asleep.
I quit picking when I was struck by a sharp pain in my arm,
my left forearm.
A bit of my hair had probed an open wound,
a round burn mark.
I sat down on the floor and remembered for a bit.

My phone turned on with a melodic series of beeps,
it had been awhile since I turned it on.

One new voicemail.

I dialed the number 1 while picking wax from my hair,
put my passcode in,
and listened.

Mom called me last night, she was crying.
I was used to that sound at this point.
"Otis wont get up, I think he's dying Justin."
A brief pause.
"Please come home."






I'm sorry Otis. I loved you.
More than a dog, you were a canine brother.
Raised alongside me.
Raised by the same parents.

I didn't come home,
at least,
not then.
Seven years.

I still think about that night,
That morning.
That mourning.

My scar itches.
Mose Nov 2021
I haven’t had a partner in so long that I’ve forgotten I am single.
The memory foam on the left side of my bed only knows left over books and plates.

The empty places replaced with the things I learned I loved.
Only open spaces here are for self-affirmations doused in lavender.
Most of which I loved was uncherished until I had room for it.
The parts of myself I could never find underneath the cover of someone else.

The sheets get wrapped between my legs and for a second, I am reminded of how untangled I am.
How free it feels to be in a place you didn’t wish you were somewhere else or someone else.
A brief recollection of finally not being lost in another.
Deep open breaths of I am finally here.

I am reminded how calm this place feels – the comfort of not missing anything. How the spaces in between are cultivated by a reflection of my love - not those I once loved.
Leocardo Reis Nov 2021
There will be others
after you.

But
none are
as you are
to me.
Dev Nov 2021
That distant memory - a used balloon that has already served it's purpose

Unable to soar pronounced as it once were

Only to bobble from my path deflated and regrettably forgotten
A friend once described to me when a memory will pop into his head and he knows while experiencing it - it will be the last time he will do so.
William Kline Nov 2021
It’s hard to remember everything I did with her
When I remember, it hurts
But I don’t want to forget
Maybe this is real pain
Pain that I don’t want to go away
Pain that I’m willing to sit through
If it means remembering you
LONE STAR Nov 2021
Don't you remember,
That my name is Amber
The girl's whose eyes are full of ember
You said I had the most beautiful eyes

Do you remember, infront of you I was shy
You said you hated it when I cry
Yet you wiped my eyes with your lies

Do you rememeber, how you spoilt me with love
When you id without me you can't live
How comes now I'm not in your life and you're alive
So you lied to me when we lied on your bed
You are the bad omen that makes me believe that all  are bad men

Do you remember,you used to be;
My shoulder to lean on
My ride or die off and on
My lover,my best friend
My oxygen
Now I can't survive
Do  you!!!?

Do you remember,
When you used to call me beautiful names
When we used to play little cute exiting love games
You tickle me and I'd laugh like crazy
Feeling a little bit hazy
Or my love for you was too heavy
You wanted royalty a real queen
But loyalty was all I could give to you my king
How many times did I bow to you
I didn't now you would get bored with me
Simply because I'm a plain Jane

Do you remember,
Late at night when we had a fight
You'd give me advices
About people's vices
You were once my inspiration
Now you are my desparation

Please remember,
My love if not my laugh
My walking grace not my silky lace
My jaded eyes not my faded skies
Please remember that you kept me before you chose and left me

Just remember,
I am Amber
And I am still somber
Because of your unrequited love
That filled my equitted half
Always remember that there is always someone who you hurt but they still love you
Mystic Ink Plus Nov 2021
I remember
That blush and glow
When I call you mine

I remember
The way
You looked at me
That eye contact
And the state of mind
And the stillness of time
That paves a way
Of sweet embrace

So what's it, to be?
To write or being written?
Admiring you
In verses
From afar

It is you
And so
It was
When you are next to me
Every day is
A new beginning
That's just how it is
Nothing else matters
Theme: Silence understood, and so much more. If it's simple, it's her
If it's simple, it's love.
Leocardo Reis Nov 2021
Lucid dreams
are my only bridge
to those an insurmountable
distance away.

There is no ship
that can breech
the barrier of time.
There is no ticket
destined for yesterday.

To those of my past,
if only I could impart
a fraction of
the tenderness
that swells from my heart.
I remember you all
with a special fondness,
one that can only be
forged by
lingering regret.

The moment in passing
and the
moment incoming,
smudges into the other.
Time blends effortlessly with itself;
hours melt into one another,
days are indistinguishable,
but the difference between
the past and present
is as evident
as a knife in the gut.

One must wonder
if pain
is the burden of memory,
that to preserve the past,
one must pay dearly at the present.
Next page